Be vewy vewy quiet

I've been meaning to post this for days, but it's been a crazy week. I have to get stuff organized at my job so that someone else can do it for three months. No small task. And no free time. But here's a little B story to make you smile...

He's been very into sneaking lately. Not in the bad way, as in sneaking cookies when you're not looking (only because that hasn't occured to him yet). Rather, he loves to sneak up on people. We have this routine where we take turns putting him to bed. One of us will get him in his jammies, help him brush his teeth, and read books. The way it USED to be, we would then tuck him into bed, and then the other parent would come in to cuddle. Not anymore. Now B likes to sneak up on the parent who's had the night "off."

It's not that easy though. There's a trick to it. If you spot him while he's sneaking up on you, even if he has genuinely surprised you (and thus succeeded in sneaking), he has a major hissy fit. Even if he's two inches from you, if he hasn't actually touched you or said "boo" yet, there'll be hell to pay if you let on that you've seen him. This has been turning out poorly for me lately. Pretty often he'll sneak up behind me while I'm on the computer. I'll be genuinely surprised, and I'll even jump when I hear him behind me. This is not the reaction he's looking for (it's too early), and he'll just plain freak out. On the other hand, if I know he's coming, I can whistle and look straight at the wall for two minutes while he "sneaks up" on me, and as long as I pretend to be surprised when he wants me to be, everything is hunky-dory.

He's developed a new strategy to combat this problem recently. Take tonight for instance. I got him ready for bed. When we were done with books & it was time for bed, he had me yell down the hall, "Daddy, B is sneaking up on you. Don't look!" Daddy can then very studiously ignore B until B chooses the moment at which Daddy should be surprised.

This has been working out very nicely, at least in terms of avoiding total meltdowns. Yet somehow I think he has not yet quite grasped the concept of "sneaking"...

Adoption update: We're still waiting on our TA (travel authorization) from China. Once we have that, our agency can set our travel date. If we had received it in the past couple days, we could conceivably have traveled before the end of January. I think it's too late for that now. Why? Chinese New Year begins February 7, and everything shuts down for a week. Some things for more (all the factories M's company deals with are closing for two weeks). Best case scenario now is that we travel around mid-February. Better news -- our passports are on their way back from San Francisco, via Fed Ex, with our Chinese visas. They should be here tomorrow. Still waiting on the I-171H though (advance permission from the US government for us to get a visa for our daughter). Sigh. So much paper. So much red tape.